Category: Israel/Palestine

NYAGRA on the Times of Israel Gala statement at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel Pauline Park 15 February 2015 I’m a member of New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (NYC QAIA), but I’m hear today speaking as chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy. NYAGRA is a transgender advocacy organization best known […]

QAIA & the pinkwashing of the NYC Council trip to apartheid Israel speech at New York City Hall Pauline Park 22 January 2015 I’m a member of New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (NYC QAIA) and I’m hear to talk briefly about the pernicious influence of the ‘pinkwashing‘ of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. […]

Howie Hawkins: why I’m endorsing him for governor over Andrew Cuomo by Pauline Park In November, New Yorkers across the state will go to the polls to vote for governor and lieutenant governor; never has the choice been clearer in 2014. The mainstream media will no doubt cast this as a contest between a well-known […]

14 August 2014 Chancellor Phyllis Wise Office of the Chancellor University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Swanlund Administration Building 601 E. John St. Champaign, IL 61820 Dear Chancellor Wise, I received my Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but I have never felt less proud of my alma mater than upon learning of your decision to […]

The unprecedented assault on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military this week brought to mind a hymn whose text was written by Johann Heermann in 1636, “Zion klagt mit Angst und Schmerzen” (Zion mourns with anxiety and pain); all one needs to do is substitute ‘Gaza’ for ‘Zion’ and the hymn could be sung […]

May 28 is ‘Jerusalem Day’ (Hebrew: יום ירושלים, Yom Yerushalayim), “an Israeli national holiday commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City in the aftermath of the June 1967 Six-Day War. The day is officially marked by state ceremonies and memorial services” (Wikipedia). But for Palestinians, Jerusalem Day […]

By Pauline Park I find one of the most frustrating aspects of the Zionist discourse through which we discuss the Israeli occupation of Palestine the constantly repeated refrain that the Palestinian people must recognize the right of Israel to exist. Significantly, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu slips back and forth between and among various formulations of […]

Holocaust Memorial Day 2014: Buchenwald, Dachau, the US Army, Israel, Palestine By Pauline Park On Holocaust Memorial Day 2014, I remember my visit to Buchenwald in the summer of 1991 when I was living in Regensburg (in central Bavaria). Along with about two dozen other American students participating in a program at the University of […]

Avraham Stern, Menachim Begin & the founding of the state of Israel Avraham Stern’s death in British custody did nothing to end the activities of the Stern Gang, which “carried on fighting the British ruthlessly and effectively: two Sternists assassinated Lord Moyne, Churchill’s minister for the Middle East, in Cairo in 1944. In 1948 the […]

Israeli apartheid & the paradox of a Palestinian poet in exile in Iceland I heard Mazen Maarouf speak at Columbia University on April 14 and was immediately struck by the paradox of a Palestinian poet in exile in Iceland. Maarouf’s poetry reading was sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Comparative Literature & […]

Israel & the Ottoman expulsion of Jews from Palestine in 1917 Ahmed Jemal Pasha on the banks of the Dead Sea “April 6, 1917 was the day set by the Ottoman authorities then ruling Palestine for the evacuation of the civilian population of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Although the Muslims who were expelled were permitted […]